1realbzy/sikaPal

# sikaPal 💰✨ A smart personal finance assistant initially focused on the African market, starting with Ghana. Track expenses, get AI-powered insights, and manage financial goals in both English and Twi. Breaking down financial barriers with plans to expand globally! 🌍📊🚀 sikaPal - Personal Finance Assistant for Africa 🔵 Version 0.1.0 | 🟢 MIT License | 🟣 Python | 🟡 Twi Support A data-driven personal finance assistant for African markets 📊 Introduction sikaPal (from the Akan word "sika" meaning money) is an intelligent, privacy-focused personal finance platform designed specifically for Africans and emerging market users. It enables financial literacy through smart expense tracking, behavioral insights, and goal-driven recommendations. Unlike conventional finance apps, sikaPal is built with local cultural contexts in mind. It offers support for Ghanaian languages (starting with Twi) and focuses on the specific financial challenges and opportunities in African markets. Note: This project is under active development. We’re shipping features fast and iterating based on user feedback. 🛠️ Technology Stack Backend Python FastAPI SQLite (dev) PostgreSQL (prod) LangChain AI & NLP Grok 3 (xAI) - Free API for financial insights and natural language processing LlamaIndex GhanaNLP ABENA (Twi BERT) Kasa (Translation) Frontend Streamlit React (future) Plotly Matplotlib DevOps Git GitHub Loguru Docker (future) 🚀 Getting Started Prerequisites Python 3.9+ Git xAI API key (for Grok 3 functionality, free with usage quotas) Installation bash Copy # Clone the repository git clone github.com cd sikapal # Create and activate a virtual environment python -m venv venv source venv/bin/activate # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate # Install dependencies pip install -r requirements.txt # Set up environment variables cp .env.example .env # Edit .env file with your xAI API key and configuration # Initialize the database python backend/utils/initialize_db.py # Run the development server python backend/main.py 🌍 Language Support sikaPal is designed with multilingual support in mind. It starts with English and Twi (Akan) for the Ghanaian market. Current Implementation Primary interface in English. Twi translations for core …